A Las Vegas Wedding Story, Part I (From the Vegas4Visitors.com Weekly Column 4/3/06)
Every year more than 100,000 couples get married in Las Vegas, making it the unofficial wedding capital of the world. Sure, many of the people who walk down the aisle do so on a whim with little more than a witness and an Elvis impersonator officiating. Heck, some don’t even walk down the aisle – they cruise up to the drive-through wedding windows.

But what happens if you want to get married in Las Vegas and want the real deal – a traditional wedding with flowers and formal wear and guests and a reception? How do you plan your nuptials - a daunting task to begin with – when you’re not even in the city where you’re going to get married?

Meet Keith Buck and Jen Hudson.

I became acquainted with the Roanoke, Virginia couple a few months ago when Keith sent me an e-mail saying he had given copies of my Moon Handbooks Las Vegas to family members as Christmas presents. They were planning on being married in Vegas in April 2006 and wanted to make sure the guests knew everything there was to see and do in the city during the non-ceremony portions of the weekend. He jokingly asked if I wanted to come to the wedding, casually mentioning there would be an open bar at the reception.

He obviously didn’t know me very well. Open bar? I’m there, dude.

In all seriousness, I thought it would be a great opportunity to look at how a Vegas wedding gets planned complete with the ups, downs, and unexpected twists and turns that come along with the process. So I talked them into letting me and my readers take a peek into their upcoming ceremony in the hopes that their experience can educate the next happy couple heading to Las Vegas to get married.

Keith, 29, and Jen, 27, are both Virginia natives currently residing in Roanoke where he works as a computer programmer and she is an employment services worker with the city’s department of health and human services.

They met about five-and-a-half years ago when Keith’s co-worker, who just happened to be Jen’s mother, set them up on a blind date. Well, not totally “blind.” He knew what she looked like since Jen’s mother had a picture of her daughter on her desk, but it was a little scary for Jen.

“Mom’s opinion is always a little different because we have different tastes,” says Jen with a laugh, “But she did all right.”

The couple took their first trip to Las Vegas together in 2003 and immediately fell in love with the city. Several return trips ensued and somewhere along the line, Keith hatched a plan to pop the question in one of the most quintessential Vegas settings: in front of the Fountains of Bellagio. The details are etched in their memories.

“It was May 14, 2005, at 12:30 in the afternoon,” Keith recalls. “I had been planning it for about five months and Jen had no idea. I didn’t want to do it anywhere else since we both love the city. It just made sense.”

So what was the song playing during the show just before he proposed? “Viva Las Vegas” of course.

A “yes” from Jen sealed the deal.

The concept of getting married in the city was almost a foregone conclusion from the start, according to Keith.

“It was sort of a dream of mine,” he says. “I wanted to do something different and even though Las Vegas is the wedding capital of the world, I never knew anyone who had gotten married there. Then I saw Jen’s sister planning her wedding (in Virginia) and all of the stress involved. Her photographer was late, the flowers were late. Getting married is supposed to be a fun time, not stressful, and many of the chapels in Las Vegas take care of all of the details for you so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Besides, as Jen says a Vegas wedding seemed to suit them and their sometimes offbeat way of looking at life.

“When we told people we were getting in married there,” Jen says, ”Everyone said we ‘fit the mold to get married in Vegas.’ Everyone thought it fit our personalities.”

After the proposal, the two immediately got to work on planning their Las Vegas wedding. They both knew they didn’t want a stereotypically tacky ceremony.

“We still wanted friends and family to attend,” says Jen. “From a woman’s perspective I still wanted something nice.”

Come back next week for the conclusion of this story as Keith and Jen pick their chapel, plan the details, and run into some unexpected roadblocks… like the closure of the hotel where they were planning their reception!

A Las Vegas Wedding Story, Part II (From the Vegas4Visitors.com Weekly Column 4/10/06)
Last week I introduced you to Keith Buck and Jen Hudson, a couple from Virginia who will be getting married in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks. Fans of the city, Keith even proposed to Jen in front of the Fountains of Bellagio and so a wedding in Vegas seemed like a no-brainer. But how do you go about planning a wedding from thousands of miles away and how do you deal with the unexpected – like a hotel closure? Find out as the story continues:

Keith had been doing some advance work, checking out the chapels and services offered via various websites and they used the time remaining on their vacation after the proposal to scope some out in person. They eventually settled on the chapel at Mandalay Bay.

“We sat down with the wedding chapel manager and she spent an hour and a half with us,” Jen explains. “We looked at the chapel and pictures of ceremonies and they really took the time to explain everything and make us feel comfortable. It was the customer service that sold me.”

Even after their vacation they continued to do research, checking out various wedding websites and reading the forum postings by other brides and grooms to make sure that their choice was a solid one.

Once they had made their final location decision then came the work of actually planning the wedding. With a hotel chapel like the one at Mandalay Bay, couples can choose from a variety of packages with mix and match options that will allow you to customize the experience based upon your needs, tastes, and budget.

Keith and Jen’s package includes the ceremony with seating for up to 50 guests, bouquets, photos and an album, a DVD recording, the minister fee, music before and during the ceremony, and more. There are even some perks beyond the walls of the chapel like fruit and champagne in the honeymoon suite, breakfast in bed, and a facial for Jen among other niceties.

When asked if there were any cost benefits to a doing a package in Las Vegas versus doing it all on their own in their town, Keith said it probably all evens out in the end. While there are associated travel fees that you don’t have with a wedding at home, some of the other expenses go away with the all-inclusive packages.

“Flowers, for example, can get expensive and you either donate them or they die,” Keith says. “At a Vegas chapel, that is all included in the ceremony fee.”

Plus the ability to customize the packages with various options (or lack thereof) allows for maximum flexibility to make it more affordable if needed.

Even with that flexibility, it isn’t cheap to do a formal wedding in Vegas (or anywhere else for that matter).

“There was some talk about having a quickie Vegas wedding when we saw the bill,” Keith jokes.

The next step was setting up a guest list. The couple says the location helped them keep the invitees to a level that they may not have stuck with if it was a local event, therefore reducing costs even further. Most people didn’t balk at the thought of traveling for the big day and no one questioned the concept of a Vegas wedding. Well, maybe one person did.

“My mom was really concerned at first,” says Keith, “But then she went to the (Mandalay Bay Chapel) website and her tune changed. She thought it was really nice.”

In the intervening months between making their decision to go with Mandalay Bay and the actual wedding, the pair has worked out the various little details that go into planning such an event. All of which was made easier by the folks at the wedding chapel who went out of their way to make sure everything was done properly.

“The staff has been fabulous,” Jen says. “All of my questions have been answered and I’ve always able to get someone when I called. I don’t have to talk to a certain person, so I can always get someone who is able to look at the records and see who I talked to before and make references to past conversations. I liked that a lot.”

Of course that didn’t mean the process has been totally stress free, especially considering a couple of major changes in plans brought on by wrecking balls. The chapel Keith and Jen liked so much was closed and a new one is being built at Mandalay Bay that they won’t be able to see until the wedding weekend. But that paled in comparison to what happened to the location where they were intending to have their reception.

“We were supposed to have the reception at the Boardwalk,” says Keith, “But that didn’t exactly work out.”

When the announcement came that the Boardwalk Hotel would be closed and torn down by the time their wedding date arrived, the couple had to scramble to find a new location for that open bar they promised me. They switched it over to a reception room at the Excalibur sight unseen.

“We’re not too worried about the Mandalay Bay situation,” Jen explains. “We know they aren’t going to downgrade and in fact it will probably be even nicer than the old ones. And the staff at Excalibur has been great to work with so we feel good about how the reception will turn out also.”

In the end they are confident that they made the right decisions and that everything will go well on their wedding day.

“We’re just planning on having a good time,” says Keith.

As it should be with any trip to Vegas – wedding or not.

Keith and Jen will be married on April 22, 2006. I’ll be doing a follow up story in this column on the wedding and the reception shortly after the happy day.

A Las Vegas Wedding Story, Part III (From the Vegas4Visitors.com Weekly Column 5/8/06)
A few weeks ago I ran a two-part story about Keith Buck and Jen Hudson, a couple from Virginia who graciously agreed to share the story about their upcoming Vegas wedding with my readers.

I got the chance to attend the wedding and am happy to report that the whole thing went off without a hitch (no pun intended). April 22, 2006 was the date and the brand new Mandalay Bay wedding chapel facility was the location. Those new chapels are definite winners, eschewing the kind of grandiose (some would say tacky) décor schemes that seem to afflict many hotel chapels in favor of clean, modern, and simple lines, plenty of dark wood trim, plush furnishings, and a general air of tastefulness.

The bride looked beautiful and the groom handsome (see the picture for proof) and the ceremony itself was as simple and tasteful as the chapel. It really goes to show that you can have a Las Vegas wedding that doesn’t involve an Elvis impersonator. Although it’s also important to note that you can make it be whatever you want, as was indicated by the wedding occurring right after Keith and Jen’s, a Hawaiian themed affair with plenty of leis and flip flops.

Keith and Jen’s families and friends were enormously gracious toward me, the unknown interloper in an obviously tight-knit group. They were some of the nicest people I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.

I am also happy to report that this is not the last we’ll be hearing from Mr. and Mrs. Buck. They mentioned to me in our interviews that the one thing they really wanted to do in Vegas (besides get married) was see “The Blue Man Group,” so I made arrangements for them to see the show as a wedding present and a small token of my appreciation. Keith and Jen have agreed to be my “special correspondents” when they go back to Vegas this summer to see the blue bald guys.

Congratulations again, Keith and Jen!

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